Murder At The Music Hall: (Auguste Didier Mystery 8) by Amy Myers Read Free Book Online Page A

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it.’ Lizzie wriggled her non-existent hips in a way that suggested the Old King Cole music hall was not above pirating songs on occasions, since Auguste doubted whether Lizzie had ever visited the Empire or the other West End halls.
    A flying skeleton in the form of Frederick Wolf rushed in to take up his interior position on the potatoes. Chairs scraped against floor, mutton pies passed in an endless chain to two harassed barmen who doubled as waiters, or passed direct to the clutching hands of impatient diners, the smell of mutton chops on the gridiron intensified, mingling with the smell of cooking kippers.Mutton chops and glasses of beer apparently flew through the air to their recipients with the same dexterity as the young man on the flying trapeze. Potatoes cascaded in white crumbly torrents on to plates. Tonight Auguste would dream of potatoes, wielded with the flashing dexterity of Frederick’s hands as he first slit it open, lifted it high in one hand, the plate in the other and shot the contents of the first onto the second, turned it out in a mound of succulent crumbs. Alump of butter followed it, a dash of pepper. . . yes, tomorrow he would try spices, curry powder and cream perhaps, a dazed voice at the back of Auguste’s mind promised, as he gazed down at the smelly ha’porth and ha’porth he’d just dished up from the unappetising pans.
    A roar went up from the hall, which could be heard even over the racket in the eating-room.
    ‘What’s that?’ Had something happened already? Surely Will had not yet arrived? Auguste dropped a chop in alarm, splashing grease on to his spotless apron.
    ‘Old Yapp, the chairman, taking his place, I expect,’ Lizzie replied offhandedly. ‘I like ’im. He’s a gentleman. He don’t let old Jowitt get away without paying me. His wife don’t like me, though. You wait till you see the size of her. She sings.’ Lizzie paused briefly to evaluate the truth of her words, then bawled out: ‘Come into the garden, Maud’, meanwhile doing a passable imitation of a woman four times her width. ‘Jowitt keeps them on because the crowd like him, and her because of him . . . But Yapp couldn’t control a bunch of coconuts.’ She giggled. ‘Hear that?’
    Auguste did. The roar was no longer friendly.
    ‘Oh, it’s going to be a good evening tonight,’ Lizzie told him happily.
    Auguste was not so confident, as he rushed from the eating-room to assume his duties as Will’s protector.
    Some fifteen minutes earlier Nettie Turner’s carriage had drawn up outside the lodgings in Whitechapel where Will Lamb still lived, despite his fame and prosperity. No one cooked sausages like Mrs Jones.
    ‘All set for the costers, Will?’ she asked brightly as he climbed in beside her.
    ‘Oh yes.’ He beamed.
    ‘You’re a love, aren’t you, Will? Don’t matter to you whether we play the Empire or Hackney Coalhole just so long as you can make people laugh.’ He grinned. ‘Doesn’t it worry you at all going back, Will?’ she asked anxiously.
    He shook his head vigorously. ‘No.’
    ‘I suppose not, with Mariella there.’ Better to get it in the open, Nettie thought to herself. The red-headed bitch would cause trouble one way or another, that was for sure.
    ‘Mariella,’ Will repeated excitedly, drawing out each syllable.
    ‘You’re still fond of her, aren’t you, Will?’
    He said nothing, but even in the dim light she could see his blush.
    ‘Like I used to be of Harry – once.’ She laughed bitterly. ‘Fools, weren’t we? Mariella wouldn’t marry you, because you were nobody. Harry was all too eager to marry me because I wasn’t. We should have marriedeach other, Will, and put an end to it. Are you still fond of her?’
    For answer, he took her hand in his and squeezed it. His felt more like a child’s than a man’s, and perhaps that was just how he thought of her, as a mother figure. Nettie sighed. Marriage wouldn’t have worked with Will, of course. She